Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim gave a damning verdict of his side’s horrendous penalty shootout defeat to Grimsby Town.
Pathetic effort
The Red Devils were torn apart by a League Two side in the first half and fully deserved to be trailing 0-2 at the break.
They did recover a bit in the second half and got two goals through Bryan Mbeumo and Harry Maguire.
Nonetheless, they lost out 12-11 in a marathon penalty shootout which saw both keepers score a penalty.
As a result, United were dumped out of the cup and only have the Premier League to focus on until the FA Cup third round begins in January.
Speaking to the press after the match, in comments carried by The Manchester Evening News, Amorim tore his players’ performance to pieces.
Worrying admission
When asked to pinpoint what went wrong he claimed, “everything. The way we started the game, we were not even here. When everything is so important in our club, everything that happened, it’s a problem in our club, we should do so much better. I just have to say sorry to our fans.”
He gave a worrying indication that his players were not really playing for him when he stated, “I felt my players spoke really loud today what they want. I think it’s easy for you [how to interpret it]. Let’s focus on the next game and then we have the stop for the international games. We will think things through.”
He also claimed that he was not so concerned by the penalty shootout result and much more how his team even got into that position and claimed that “the best team” won on the night.
Amorim has many critics but one thing he has never shied away from is taking responsibility and he claimed, “I’m the manager. It should be my job to understand what happened. Again, I’m really sorry for our fans. Let’s focus on the next game. That is more than a result. That is the biggest problem in the team. I think it was really clear today.”
No answers
Amorim seemed to indicate that he wasn’t very sure on why exactly his team failed to show up so spectacularly during the cup tie.
He added, “I would like to say very smart things and very important things. I have nothing to say. Nothing to say. That is the biggest problem also. To see the same mistakes and nothing to say in this moment. I’m really sorry for our fans. It’s too much sometimes.”
The manager claimed that you can’t change everything in a summer but you need to win games and not show the type of performance that they did last night.
He concluded, “I think something has to change. In this moment, we need to focus on the weekend and then we have time to think.”
Featured image Shaun Botterill via Getty Images
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Alex Browne
Alex is a huge Manchester United fan, inspired by greats of his homeland such as George Best, Harry Gregg and Norman Whiteside. Proud owner of such niche shirts such as Kleberson, Eric Djemba-Djemba and Gary Neville. Grew up pretending to be Ruud van Nistelrooy and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in the back garden, with little success.
